Defending Diversity in Our Unity

E pluribus unum! The seal of the United States bears this Latin motto meaning “out of many one.” It expresses our heritage as a free society. We form a unified nation comprised of citizens representing diverse ethnicities, languages, customs, values, and religious convictions. Our union is not achieved despite our diversity; our diversity strengthens our union, much as a compound of chemicals forms a stronger substance.

Achieving and maintaining unity amidst diversity is a delicate undertaking, particularly in the realm of religious belief. I offer here a few reflections on that project.

Since 1791, our government has assumed the role of protecting freedom of conscience in religious matters. The First Amendment to the Bill of Rights restricts governing authorities from enacting laws or wielding influence that necessitates or encourages religious conformity, and/or prohibits citizens from freely exercising any religious belief not employed as a cover for illegal activity. The government is to remain neutral on religion, while securing and protecting the freedom of all citizens to embrace any religion their conscience approves, or none at all.

In the history of nations, such liberty is a fresh concept. In ages past, nations viewed religious belief similarly to the way free societies view taxation today; namely, it was the duty of governing authorities to dictate terms to their subjects. When our government imposes taxes upon us, most of us dutifully comply without asking a lot of questions. Innocuous grumbling abounds, but we accept the necessity of taxation and the reality that nonconformity leads to prosecution.

So it once was with religion. The state established, endorsed, and supported an approved religion all citizens were expected to adopt. There was typically some measure of tolerance for dissenters, but no sense that religious belief was purely a matter of conscience. Dissenters from the state-approved religion were kept on a very short leash. All were pressured to comply. Some were eliminated. And so it remains in certain nations today, all of which are positioned at considerable distant from our shores.

If religious liberty is to survive in the United States, we must vigilantly counter notions that have the power to erode it. One such notion, widely held, is the claim that unity is achieved among religious people by standing together on common ground. “There are core beliefs we all share about the divine; recognizing these beliefs will unify us.” No, there are not, and no they won’t.

Many want to believe such a notion, but it simply is not true. Find honest, straight talking Hindu, Buddhist, Baha’i, Sunni Muslim, Shi’a Muslim, conservative Christian, and liberal Christian scholars, put them in a room, set them to determining core religious beliefs they hold in common—beliefs that accurately reflect the perspective of their respective faith communions—and they will not emerge with enough common ground to support a little toe.

When common religious ground is sought, people tend to nod in agreement on pious generalities while perceiving even those generalities in different ways. Announce in a sufficiently diverse room of religious scholars that “God is love” and you will find no unity. Hindus in the room—representing nearly three times as many adherents as the total population of US citizens—believe some gods are loving, but not all. If pressed, others would never lead with this statement and would, at any rate, hold a fundamentally different definition of love from that purported by others. Yet others would shudder at the thought of limiting God to the confines of descriptive language. And yet, to prove civil and cooperative, most in the room will profess general agreement with the declaration that “God is love.”

There is a better way forward, a way that better accords with who we are as a nation. That way is to respect one another’s liberty of conscience. Freedom of religious expression is the common ground. We can respect those who hold beliefs in direct conflict with our own. We need not quake in one another’s presence to think we disagree. Disagreement is not the enemy and can cause no damage on its own. Intolerance of another’s freedom of belief is the enemy. While some nations have yet to discern this truth, spiritual convictions can be stimulated and challenged, but never coerced. The only true believer in any religious system is one who is free to believe something else, or nothing at all.

Fearing non-conformity, and tripping over ourselves to assert that we are united in belief, is unity at the expense of diversity. Rather, let us state our positions, even debate them. Such diversity is healthy and permits an exchange of ideas that enriches all. When the articulation of differing opinions is restricted to private meetings of people who all agree with one another from the outset, the sharpening influence of those opinions is lost to the public square.

The balance of unity and diversity in religious belief is further hindered when persons are pressured to acknowledge the validity of every other religion and restricted from any exclusive religious claim. The order of the day is to suppress religious distinctions in the interest of common ground, while charging as intolerant anyone who claims to possess religious truth that is binding on others and/or superior to their beliefs. Absolute truth claims, distinctive doctrines, objections to the beliefs of others, are too consistently classified as intolerant opposition to societal unity.

Ironically, this insistence on uniformity of religious belief is itself a religious position that champions unity at the expense of freedom of conscience. When people adopt such a position they move from protecting religious belief to controlling it. What is most alarming is when the governing authorities take up this position, wielding their influence by rewarding those who concur with their views and punishing those who do not.

I expect people to believe what they believe. I respect their right to articulate their beliefs. And I am not at all encouraged when they say I am entitled to believe the exact opposite without consequence. We must give one another the freedom to speak honestly and even to confront us with truth claims with which we disagree.

Differing opinions are not the problem. Pretending we all agree is the problem. Crushing decent from majority positions with charges of intolerance is the problem. The pluribus can only be unum as long as the “one” does not squelch representatives of the “many” with charges of intolerance for honestly held beliefs.